1750 Smooth Trip

Wednesday, March 2, 2008

How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

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I had a 200 mile round trip today, to a place I'd never been before, and I used the new GPS, which by the way is not called a GPS anywhere in its material - it's a "personal travel assistant".

I had enough confidence to leave the house without a Mapquest or Google printout, and got only .1 mile when I questioned the wisdom of that.

There are two routes I usually take to the bridge over the Hudson. I turn left out of my street onto the highway, and then turn right a few hundred feet down the road, or if I have to go into the village first (like for gas or money) I go about 2 miles down the road and then turn right. When I got to the end of my road today, the nice lady told me to turn left, and go 5.5 miles on that road.

OMG, where's she taking me?

We did get to the bridge, but she took me about 2 miles past the bridge, then the right turn, then backtracked to the bridge. So her route was about 4 miles longer than it should have been.

Right before that first right turn there's the remnant of an old road, from back before they cleaned up the intersection, that makes a diagonal over to the other road. It's about 200 feet long, and avoids the traffic light. She told me to turn right on that little road, but I happen to know it's full of potholes, so I didn't turn and continued on to the light.

Now, the voice is very dry and unemotional --- until you don't obey! She said "Recalculating route", and honest to God you could HEAR the disgust, the undercurrent of "You are too stupidly stubborn to follow simple directions, and now *I* have to work to save your tail!"

It's not just me. I stopped in to see Piper on my way home, and told him about it, and I got as far as "... unemotional, until you don't do what she says..." and he laughed and said "And then you can hear the disgust! The way she says 'RE!calculating!'"

The device provides an ETA, which, when I left the house, and until I got on the Thruway, was 11:23 am. On the Thruway I was traveling at 5 mph over the speed limit (not my choice, just staying "with traffic"), and the further I got, the more the ETA moved out. By the time I got to NJ, the ETA was 11:35 am. Odd. Did it expect me to be going faster?

The only complaint I have is that she will tell you when a turn is coming up way ahead of time, but she just says like "Turn in 2.0 miles. ... Turn in 1.1 miles .... Turn in .7 miles" and so on, but she doesn't say which way to turn until the last minute (or it seems that way), which is awkward when you find yourself in heavy fast traffic on a multilane highway, and discover that you have like four seconds to get over to the ramp off the far left lane, from the far right.

My man says that's because I have the female one. If I had the male one, it would be more informative. (Send the angry email to him.)

So, anyway, the trip felt short. Not worrying about missing a turn or getting lost seemed to make a big difference.
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